Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’m sure a lot of you have tried out Nemesis’ condition-power damage hybrid build for PVE at some point. It’s been out of date for some time; he hasn’t updated it since the nerf to the Duumfire trait and crit damage nerf to celestial stats. I waited for some time and decided to update it myself. I believe that this is the best way to go about doing both condition and power type damage in the same build for necromancer, but I am open to others’ suggestions/opinions as well. Here is the link to the build on the editor and also a short video I made going over the build and some footage of it’s capabilities. If any of you have ideas on how to improve the build, please share! Cheers!

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRAnd7Yjc00Sb1Ne3whbiahC66MA63o/gRIFoqNA-TBDBABVcCAO4gAExTIw5DgAmq/Uz+DnpEEgDIgZK/yTPRgaWC4ABQKAYGWB-e

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60q8pb6NiM

Try this .. dump the celestial stuff in your accessories.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRAnd7Yjc00Sb1Ne3whbiahC66MA63o/gRIFoqNA-TRDBABVcCAO4gAExTIoalUOfAEwU9na2f4MlgYpcBgDIQe6JCUzSAHIASBAzwK-e

Mathematically, this will deal more damage both in terms of direct and condition damage due to the jump in power (even though the condition damage stat cmoes down).

For example, here’s the DPS per stack damage based on bleed …

Yours with Celestial: 2211 + (.05 * 836) = 2252.8 DPS / Stack
Mine without Celestial: 2428 + (.05 * 799) = 2467.95 DPS / Stack

Of course, there’s a bit of a tradeoff in terms of Health and Armor. But, if you are good at dodges/evades then that should never be a problem.

This is based on the condition damage formula of…
Base Damage + (Factor * Condition Damage)

Where FACTOR is different for each condition applied.

I’m not really a big fan of the sigils either to be honest, I typically always run a Sigil of Force on my main hand weapon and then switch out off hand sigils depending on the situation (night for dungeons, etc).

Stacking sigils are good as long as you aren’t blowing past trash mobs in dungeons – if you are, then it’s really a bit of a waste. I find that stacking sigils typically work best in WvW – but that’s just me.

I would consider using these sigils instead …

Superior Sigil of Force
Superior Sigil of Bursting
Superior Sigil of Strength

Cheers!

Full Sinister, change trinkets between celestial/sinister depending on what you want to lean on more. Bursting/Torment Sigil and Force/Bloodlust (personal preference)
Runes Aristocracy or Mad Kings.
Strength Runes and Life Blast are a bad idea, cause in a hybrid build you do everything else except Life Blasting all the time, it’s not worth buying the Strength runes just for BiP/Strenght Sigil.
Anyway these builds are cool for the Silverwastes and very casual dungeon runs

The issue with hybrid isn’t Dhuumfire or Celestial, it’s that there’s no particular benefit to choosing hybrid over straight power (outside of play style decisions). The bleeds are negligible considering you’re giving up a lot of condi damage by not rolling Sinister trinkets anyway.

If I did want to run a hybrid, I’d go full Sinister jewels, zerk back piece, zerk
power weapons (axe/focus or dagger/warhorn, whatever you prefer) with bloodlust/force and sinister scepter/dagger with bursting/condi stacking (I prefer earth, works well with Necro condi builds) and Aristocracy runes.

I agree with Gnat. A hybrid build needs a purpose and some synergy to make sense. We only get 14 points to spend. Necromancers only get a lot of condition damage from scepter, Death Nova, Epidemic, Dhuumfire, and certain weapon sigils or runes.

Gnat.9405:

The issue with hybrid isn’t Dhuumfire or Celestial, it’s that there’s no particular benefit to choosing hybrid over straight power (outside of play style decisions). The bleeds are negligible considering you’re giving up a lot of condi damage by not rolling Sinister trinkets anyway.

The reason for choosing hybrid over power is that you get the benefits of a conditionmancer’s AOE potential while maintaining decent single-target dps as well. I feel that necromancer has very inconsistent multiple-target power-type damage (yes there are wells and DS #4, but that’s about it, and they have high cooldowns). Using the hybrid gives you the ability to keep consistent damage through bleeding. Say you’re doing 2k bleeds/tick; this seems poor on it’s own, but when you spread that across several targets, you’re doing closer to 10k total. Plus, let’s not forget that this is a hybrid, so while you’re doing 2k bleeds on 5+ targets, you’re also doing additional single-target damage through power (plus well of suffering in bursts, torment, poison, and even burning if you transfer it from yourself to a target before using epidemic). Plus, vulnerability and other conditions that can help boost group dps can be spread on targets with epidemic as well, making the entire group melt mobs faster. The hybrid still does more total group damage than any berserker necro build out there; the only place power builds are superior is in single-target fights.

Also, the reason I chose rampager over sinister is that the precision is essential in damage output in this build (in power criticals and bleed casting). Two bleeds that occur are based on critical hits; through the trait in the condition line, and sigils of earth. So I may be doing more damage per bleed, but there will be fewer of those bleeds.

Gnat.9405:

The issue with hybrid isn’t Dhuumfire or Celestial, it’s that there’s no particular benefit to choosing hybrid over straight power (outside of play style decisions). The bleeds are negligible considering you’re giving up a lot of condi damage by not rolling Sinister trinkets anyway.

If I did want to run a hybrid, I’d go full Sinister jewels, zerk back piece, zerk
power weapons (axe/focus or dagger/warhorn, whatever you prefer) with bloodlust/force and sinister scepter/dagger with bursting/condi stacking (I prefer earth, works well with Necro condi builds) and Aristocracy runes.

How would you trait such a build?

@EvesDesire.2596 AoE damage on necro is fun but in a group setting any trash mobs are getting nuked with your party’s cleave damage before you ever have a chance to ramp up enough conditions for your bleeds to be nearly as effective as dagger auto with the targets that it does hit. Also Rabid and Sinister give the same precision values, so you’re only trading power for toughness in PvE which is a weird decision.

@Cerbeius.7129 I did you one better: Here’s the Axe/Focus version of the build For Dagger/Warhorn (which I would recommend) replace Axe Training with Chill of Death in Spite and Reaper’s Precision with Banshee’s Wail in Curses.

Thanks for the quick answer, Gnat!

Gonna give it a try.

EvesDesire.2596:

Also, the reason I chose rampager over sinister is that the precision is essential in damage output in this build (in power criticals and bleed casting). Two bleeds that occur are based on critical hits; through the trait in the condition line, and sigils of earth. So I may be doing more damage per bleed, but there will be fewer of those bleeds.

In context of this specific build (just rampager vs sinister armor) the difference is 4% critical chance and 94 condition damage.
Since Sigil of Earth has a cooldown the proc difference here is rather negligable with either 49% or 53% crit chance. With Barbed Precision (no icd) you’re looking at about 32% vs 35% chance to proc bleeding, not factoring in fury. That means you’ll average a single additional bleed proc every ~33 hits (more with fury). Now, depending on the type of skills and number of opponents you’re facing this might take you as long as a Life Transfer on 5 targets or somewhere between 10-15 seconds on a single target.
On the other hand 94 condition damage means an additional 4,7 dmg per bleed tick. Your condition damage will vary with might, corruption stacks and weapon swapping… but for the sake of simplicity let’s assume you’re averaging 100 dmg per bleed tick with rampager armor and 105 with sinister. And that means once you have 20 stacks of bleeding going you need to proc 1 extra Barbed every 4 seconds.
Like I said, there are a lot of variables to be considered, but I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this by now: there’s no way you’re doing more damage with rampager armor than with sinister.

Anchoku.8142:

I agree with Gnat. A hybrid build needs a purpose and some synergy to make sense. We only get 14 points to spend. Necromancers only get a lot of condition damage from scepter, Death Nova, Epidemic, Dhuumfire, and certain weapon sigils or runes.

The scepter with epidemics brings aoe capacity that a regular power necro lacks.

This alone is a good reason to invest in an hybrid in silverwastes or casual dungeon runs, where mobs aren’t los’ed and packed tight to be cleaved to death.

You are correct, VodCom, but the number of situations where Epidemic is powerful is not terribly high. Mobs in SW do not clump as often as in tower defense events in Orr. I find running primarily power more beneficial. Scepter will work in SW with kiting and patience but a MM or CC/power build tend to work better for me

First i’m sorry to bring this old topic up 2 months ago since the first post im just started playing this game and had no interested in necro but now thing is different, i do really enjoy playing necro atm and found this build i got big interesting and want to try

I already got everything needed for the build but in the way i see rune of strength is a huge waste are there any better rune than strength ? becuz these stuff cost a lot i want to take rune of the pack any good ?

Most runes with strength cost more because power works better than anything else. That said, look at Privateer or just slot crests and gems.